


So Darkness I Became

by Inky_Pens



Category: Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Voyeurism, mal who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:36:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28945275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inky_Pens/pseuds/Inky_Pens
Summary: The merzost was every bit as addictive as he'd promised.
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova & Alina Starkov, The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 5
Kudos: 89





	So Darkness I Became

The history books would say that she fought it as long as she could, but the truth she had never spoken aloud was that she never tried. She knew the moment she pulled the shadows from his mouth that she would never taste anything more exquisite. He made sure of that, as well. He'd kept the taste on her tongue so she’d never forget. 

After the Darkling claimed the throne, the Fold had been remade in her image. The blackened earth that divided Ravka now burned an insurmountable desert, and on the other side lay waiting the Soldat Sol and deserters of the First and Second armies who trusted in Alina to reclaim the throne for the rightful king. As it were, Nikolai Lantsov was indisposed as a merzost-infected monster that she could net yet save, though not for lack of trying.

She had long-since mastered the Cut, using it unsparingly on members of the Darkling’s army as they fought to protect what little of Ravka they had left. In skirmishes and larger battles alike, she deployed her own nichevo’ya. The amplifiers made it easy, tactile power like sand slipping through her fingers. On days of doubt, she told herself at least she hadn't been cruel. Apologizing was pandering to an audience who no longer needed it. Mal had been dead for almost a year now, and the friends who resented her station also benefited from it. When the Darkling thought to make examples of dissidents who travelled closely with Alina, she cast darkness down his throat and watched as it emptied his lungs. 

_"Quick learner," he mumbled against her ear that night. His hips rocked into her hers slowly while he watched the skein of shadow tighten around her throat "Apt pupil."_

Their physical relationship began with inexplicable visits over a bond created either by the amplifiers he forced upon her or the merzost she continued to create using the remnants of his power. The visits were benign at the start. Watching him eat. Hovering over her while she read. Interrupting his meetings. Staying with her until she fell asleep.

But then he would hum things in her ear. Wicked things about the smell of her, wondering how she tasted. He hoped she’d balk. He tried getting under her skin, not realizing she was his the moment he put the antlers around her neck. That he was already inside her, his extraordinary power was part of the blood that ran through her veins. As though Mal’s death had merely faltered her heart’s rhythm but never broke it.

And then he appeared one night after she’d stepped out of a bath. His gaze flickered and for that second, for that split blink-and-you-miss-it second, she saw the weight of a thousand lifetimes leave his eyes. So she pounced. The towel fell from her arms and she sat on edge of her bed, legs wide, while the water dripped from her hair over her breasts, down her stomach, between her thighs. 

He watched her get herself off with clumsy but effective finger strokes. He said nothing, but if she had stopped moaning long enough, she might have heard his heavy breathing. 

Every visit became more explicit. They traded jaunts of self-pleasure like it was a game. She seemed to know when he wanted to savor her, and he knew just how to test her limited experience. She wasn’t shy--years of co-ed exposure at Keramzin took some of the shock value out of sex--but it was the way he taught her to twist her fingers, how to scratch and pull at her own nipples. The first time she tasted herself was under his watchful stare, encouraging her with a frequent lick of his lips. In return, she picked cucumbers from a farm they were hiding in and practiced on them in front of him. It was a wet, messy affair that didn’t _feel_ sexy, but the noises she made--slurping, muffled moans, and the catch in her throat when she went too deep--all brought him to release by his own hand. 

A few times, he got close enough to feel the weight of his body on hers or the pressure of fingertips against her cheek. He used the shadows to tease her, playing with her to discover all the soft spots that made her squirm. 

But on the rare occasion they were physically present in the same room, he found other ways to train her body. He used the shadows to dull her senses while he took her in the dark. He kept her arms pinned above her head and slowly filled her, inch by agonizing inch, for what could have been seconds but felt like hours. She shook, a gentle tremble that felt violent under the heavy blanket of sense deprivation. When he was sheathed to the hilt, he stilled, counting the heartbeats in the pulse of her warm cunt squeezed around him. 

There were moments where Alina saw their whole future in his eyes. It was gleaming adoration, even as she sat on the floor, head lolled back against the foot of the bed, while his cock buried deep in her mouth and his hand wrapped tightly around her throat, saliva dribbling down her chin and coating his hand. 

She liked it best when he would kiss her during, though that took some months to build. Now, he couldn’t stop kissing her, and the slide of his tongue against her own was heaven--maybe the only heaven Alina would ever have. He coaxed breathy whimpers from her mouth, chuckled against her lips when he bent her legs up towards her shoulders and she groaned at the stretch and pull of every muscle under his weight. 

Still, she fought with him more than she fucked him. Alina and her people were able to maintain the cities close to the Fold’s border, but venturing any closer to Os Alta was near impossible. Balakirev was a city they fought over for months but ultimately lost. It was a devastating and demoralizing hit that Alina mourned privately by concealing herself as a barmaid among his soldiers inside the city. Genya had given her red hair, green eyes, and a warmer complexion but left her figure with the same gentle curves. With significant magic, she coaxed the antlers into something closer to a gaudy necklace. If this were to work, she needed to be recognizable to the only other person who knew the shape of her better than anyone.

The mechanics of their bond meant they could find each other by feel, not by location. It didn’t matter that she was in a squat tavern among many identical ones in the large, overcrowded city. It only mattered that if he sensed her, he could--and would--find her. 

The general had just ripped the cheap dress from her body when the Darkling’s image rippled in. The anger was palpable between them, but she didn’t hesitate. Alina turned away from the soldier to face the now-occupied corner and watched with vengeful satisfaction as the Darkling took in the scene and recognized that despite her changed appearance, he was looking at his Sun Summoner bedding someone else. The stranger’s hands callously grabbed at her, then roughly shoved a hand between her legs while sucking on her neck. The moans were for the benefit of one man and detriment of another, punctuated by a series of swears and yesses. _Keep going, just like that, harder, more_. She reached around to palm the bulge that dug into her lower back and worked her fingers through the fasteners of his uniform pants to free him into her eager hand. 

She half-expected the Darkling to end the connection immediately, but to her surprise, he only watched with a simmering rage while the poor bastard behind her grunted against her shoulder and opened her with two thick fingers. It was the Darkling’s attention to her that made her just wet enough that the sudden intrusion was only slightly uncomfortable, but she easily masked the grimace with a gasp and another moan for good measure. 

“Do you even know his name?” the Darkling growled at her.

The man pulled her to the bed, intentions clear, but she wrestled her way on top of him, straddling his lap in reverse to keep her eyes leveled on the Darkling while she sank down the length of the no-name dick. He didn’t feel as big as the Darkling looked, and maybe that was for the best, as it made taking him in a smooth and easy task. 

“You like it this way, yeah?” the man grunted from under her. He’d placed both hands on her hips, guiding her at the pace he wanted. Quick, stuttering movements without any real rhythm. His gravelly voice spat the words--not a man used to a woman taking control, but a man too desperate for a warm cunt to care. “Dirty whore.” 

The Darkling raised a brow at her in irritation. “Do you? Like this?” 

“I like...when you don’t talk,” she answered both men. 

The eyes looking back at her abandoned their rage for a moment to complement his smirk. It was exhilarating as it always had been, him watching her. “Now we both know that’s not true.”

She chuckled in spite of herself.

The soldier groaned, bucking his hips up into her, a bruising grip on her waist that felt like he was trying to squeeze out her insides. She tried wriggling to ease the pain, but the man was determined to move things along faster than Alina’s thighs could go. She was faltering--injuries sustained in the day’s battle were catching up to her, and the exhaustion was weeping from her muscles into her bones. This suddenly felt like a stupid idea, a misguided attempt to hurt the Darkling they way he continuously hurt her. And sure, he was furious, raging with barely-contained jealousy behind his voyeurism, but was the Darkling capable of feeling anything other than pride and power? 

He watched her resolve begin to waiver, and a softness grew in his hard expression. “Lean forward,” he instructed. “Brace your hands on his legs and rock your hips.”

The new angle forced the guy beneath her to drop his hands from the punishing hold and focus his attention on watching as Alina rode him. Sweat began dripping under the weight of her hair, down her neck and between her breasts. She closed her eyes, wanting to hurry this along, so she could make the very long, solo trek back to camp.

“He won’t last for much longer. Do you want to come?”

Alina looked up at him, gauging his offer. Why should he help her when what she was doing felt like a betrayal of something unspoken between them?

“Well?” he prompted. 

Her nod was demure.

A wisp of shadow danced towards her, cooling her overheated skin the moment it made contact. It felt like goosebumps and not unpleasant. It slid down her body, caressing her nipples, and tickling over her stomach. When it enveloped her clit, she gasped. It felt like…

She lifted her head to see the Darkling using his tongue mirroring the sensations working her into a frenzy. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she cried. Her hips ground down on the man under her, but as his own orgasm approached, he pounded into her so hard her body flew forward, face slamming into the mattress.

“Look at me,” the Darkling growled at her, anger ripping through his tone. “While you fuck him, I want you to look at the one who made you like this. I want you to know how easily I can unmake you.”

The sensation against her clit became a series of intense vibrations unlike anything she had felt before. It was incredible was bliss and paradise and all the mindblowing euphemisms she had ever heard about being in this state until it wasn’t. Until it was too much and she felt herself splintering. Her hands began to glow.

“Alina,” he warned, but he was _brutal_. He wouldn’t pull back. Maybe not until the soldier finished. This was not about her pleasure; it was punishment.

“Aleksander,” Alina whispered, and it was a _plea_. It was one thing to pick up a local barmaid after battle, but the Sun Summoner? Surely the Darkling knew what risk he would be putting her in. Finally, she felt the shift in him before she could see it. The overstimulation was abandoned, because the Darkling had used the shadow that was just thrumming her clit to suffocate the soldier. She had scrambled off his lap before he was able to finish off inside of her. 

The Darkling stood stoic to his corner. “You’re going to have to dispose of him.”

Her bearings finally gathered, she sent him an eye roll and an annoyed huff.

“If you leave him like this, it will be suspicious. He’s one of the higher-ranking generals.”

“Well whose fault is that?” she hissed. Her dress was torn and too revealing for the streets, so she picked up the man’s coat and placed it over her. 

“You can kill them in battle but not in bed?”

“I do what I need to do when it needs to be done. We discern that need differently.”

“You’re weak,” he argued. “That’s why you lost Balakirev today.”

“We _lost_ Balakirev because you held the townspeople hostage. You used your own citizens as pawns. It was ruthless. You are no different from the last king, and you will fall just as he did in your own time.”

She ended her tirade with a pointed glare, remembering the resentment that brought her to this place, and made her way towards the door.

“I’m not fond of the hair.”

Alina’s eyes skipped over the dead body to glance at the bedside table. “The tailoring should fade in an hour or so.” She would need to be out of sight before it did.

“The rassolnik is good here,” he suggested with a forced nonchalance.

She heard the oft-spoken reproach in his tone anyway and wasn’t going to explain again that she was used to stale bread and hard cheese. 

“An hour, you said?” 

Alina nodded. He began to fade from their bond, but before he was gone, the shimmering image of him approached her at the door to press his lips to her forehead. “Don’t be long,” he murmured.

The nichevo’ya was easy to create, easier to command. “Dispose of the body,” she murmured. She created another one and used it to take her to him, where he would be waiting for her to stay the night. It was their routine when they found themselves in the same city for a time. And if she spent all the time between those meetings hating herself a little more for the craving, for giving in to the addiction, well, she wouldn’t be the first Saint with a sordid past.

Sometimes she thought he must know how this would end, her inevitable submission, and she could practically taste his pity as she fought anway.

The history books would say she never stood a chance.

But what they didn’t know was that she never even tried.


End file.
